One of my wife's favorite foods is fruit (mostly all kinds). There is typically always a carton of clementine oranges at our house. Now, I do not dislike clementines, but I do not help my wife to finish them. I will eat a slice or two of the ones that she peals, but I will grab a banana before an orange. What I like hearing is her commentary on whether or not they were good, or not. She never fails to tell me which of the ones was full of flavor. Interesting fact is that no one entire batch of clementines has been, by her definition, good.
At one point, I was pondering (yes, I was thinking deeply about fruit) the fact that this is not an issue with clementines alone. Think about grapes for a minute. In my experience, when I eat an entire cluster of grapes, the taste has never been consistent. Sometimes I will experience the sweet, sour, or tart flavor that we know comes from the fruit only to then eat one that tastes like a bland sack of water. [Feel free to interject your experience at this point.] This all leads me to reflect on a part of Jesus' teaching.
In one of my first lectures at seminary I heard an illustration that reshaped my thinking of getting to truly know others. Jesus illustrates for us in Luke 6:43-45 (and Matthew 12:33-37) that you will know a tree by its fruit. Back in the time when this was said, all of Jesus’ hearers would have known what he was talking about. From our end, this may seem to be pretty simple as well. Thus we are left with the question, “If a person is not producing good aspects from their life, then are they a good person?” By 'good aspects' I mean fruits of the spirit and things like that. But then comes the question, “How do you know a fruit is good?” Can you look on a hillside and be able to tell whether or not the apple tree is producing good apples? Would you be able to look down a row of orange trees in Florida and be able to determine whether the oranges are going to taste good or produce good juice? I think we would all answer no. My mom always taught me to pick up the bananas and check its underside while I was at the grocery store. Sometimes when they are being packed they are dropped and bruised on the bottom, leaving the banana itself to bruise at a later time. Thus, you would have to get really close to whatever it is you are looking at to determine whether or not it is good, don’t you?
Also, even if it looks good, don’t you have to taste it to determine if it was actually good? Have you ever peeled the skin off an apple? When preparing to make a home-made apple pie, most recipes call for you to peal the skin off the apple. What is interesting is that even though there are no clear visible bruising or damage to the apple, there are bruises and spots of decay underneath the skin. All of the apples that I pealed, even the ones that looked picture perfect, had spots underneath the skin. Isn’t there a saying that goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? It would seem to me that there is a parallel here.
This all brings me to the point that we need to fully know someone before we determine if their “fruit” is either good or bad. In conversations within the church (Quiz: The church is what or who? Hint: go back to my last post), however, I hear language that presupposes something that is not found in scripture. Can we fully know someone? I would say, no. Only one person shows that he can fully know someone, and that person is Jesus (Look up: Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael in John 1:43-51 specifically dealing with Nathanael, and Jesus and the woman of Samaria in John 4:1-26). So then, why do we think and try to judge whether or not someone is being ‘fake’ or ‘coping-out’. Therefore, the only person (besides Jesus) who can know someone is the individual himself (as Paul admits to being the worse sinner that he knows in 1 Timothy 1:15). If you want to test this theory, ask a married couple who have been married for fifty years or more. Better yet, ask your grandparents. Most likely, they will tell you that they know their spouse very well, and I trust they do. However, I guarantee you that they would be honest and also tell you that they do not ‘fully’ (and I mean an all-inclusive knowledge like that of Jesus) know their spouse.
Therefore, I would say that Jesus’ teaching is not to teach us to deem trees or fruit as either good or bad, but rather that we need to be involved in people’s lives. We should not be looking across the room, nor should we be trying to decipher the gossip that is lingering in the halls and sanctuaries. From what seems to be a simple illustration, I think comes a complexity that we over look in our interpretation of Scripture. If we interpret correctly, we actually have to do work rather than simply sitting back and being judges. This passage is more about drawing us to love one another, rather than to being fruit inspectors.
I say all this because the church’s dissension within itself is the biggest hindrance to the mission that God has given the church. The class that I am taking, Practicing a Generous Orthodoxy, is discussing how to better unify the church. The goal is to present an orthodoxy (by definition, orthodoxy is an authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice) in which a person should be open, patient, communal minded and caring when interacting with different theologies that are presented to them (see the list below of definitions defined within my group for class). The dissension I am referring to is when we (and I include myself at times) express our religious pride. And by expressing, I mean arguing and disassociating from others over opinions and-or personal convictions. For one, Paul says in Titus 3:9, “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.” But a more important note is in Jesus’ statement found in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Did you catch that? They will know we are His (Jesus’) disciples by our “love for one another.”
I am not saying that we focus on loving one another and throw out the theology and doctrine that comes from the word of God. In fact, a generous orthodoxy (if you look through the definitions below) proposes that we all agree on the dogma of orthodoxy. The dogma - the core (i.e. what we stand on) - is established by the majority of God's people over time. Why? Because time weeds things out, but more so it is the testimony of the Holy Spirit! An example of this is in the gospel: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-5) So I propose that our love for one another plus doctrine should work together as, I have heard it said, “like two sides of the same coin.”
So what do you think? Do we take a try at being generously orthodox, or do we focus on how well we can inspect one another’s fruit until we weed out enough people? Not to be rude, but I propose that if you spend your time practicing the later, you will sooner or later find yourself inside a building by yourself.
From my group discussion, being generously orthodox is:
- Someone who views all denominations and Christian traditions in a loving way - not agreeing with them but considering them.
- Diversity while agreeing on the same basic tenets.
- Having patience with other views.
- Seeking community above all else.
- The idea of placing people above principles when pursuing Jesus.
- Having openness to others' beliefs, accepting them as possibilities and even Truth - even if they are in tension with one's own views, recognizing that God is far above any one set of beliefs or theology.
- A person who adheres to one set formula to the Christian life and-or salvation, would not be a person who would be "generously orthodox."
For Further Reading concerning this discussion: Your Church is Too Small by John H. Armstrong
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